– Armored Things is a crowd analysis and intelligence software company based in Boston, MA.
– Company raised $12m in Series A funding.
– The round was led by Nimble Ventures with participation from Gutbrain Ventures, PBJ Capital, and Micromanagement Ventures, as well as existing investors Glasswing Ventures, Will Ventures, and iNovia Capital.
– The company intends to use the funds to continue to build out its product platform, add to its team, and accelerate its go-to-market efforts in sports and entertainment venues, and on college and corporate campuses.

– Branch Energy, a tech-powered, green energy provider focused on helping consumers reduce their energy bills and carbon footprints, raised $4.5m in seed funding.
– The round was led by Comcast Ventures with participation from Global Founders Capital, Inovia Capital, and Assaf Wand – CEO of home insurance unicorn Hippo.
– The company intends to use the funds to: launch in the US in states with deregulated energy markets, expand the team, grow the data, and analytic infrastructure development.

– AlayaCare, a global home and community care software company, announced a $225m CAD Series D funding round led by Generation Investment Management LLP with participation from Klass Capital and incumbent investors Inovia Capital, CDPQ, and Investissement Québec.
– The US is now the fastest-growing part of AlayaCare’s business, representing 7x growth in the last 24 months.
– AlayaCare will use the funding to continue global expansion, hire additional staff and further invest in innovation capabilities to build a more complete post-acute offering in addition to products that help solve labour market issues around employee shortages and churn.
– The transaction was supported by TD Securities Inc. as exclusive financial advisor, Aust Legal, and Stikeman Elliott LLP who acted as advisors for AlayaCare.

– ResQ, a startup that helps restaurants repair and service their equipment through contractor work, raised $7.5m funding.
– The round was led by Homebrew, Golden Ventures and Inovia Capital.
– Participating angel investors include Nilam Ganenthiran, president at Instacart; Gokul Rajaram, DoorDash executive and board member of Pinterest and Coinbase; as well as customers, including Soul Foods, a global franchisee of Yum! Brands.
– ResQ has now raised $9m in known venture capital to date.
– The capital will primarily help ResQ double or triple its 60-person team across engineering, sales and operation roles.
– The company will also earmark money toward launching in new markets, building atop its current presence in San Francisco, LA, Dallas, Chicago and Phoenix.

– Botpress, a Montreal-based early-stage startup, raised $15m in Series A funding.
– The round was led by Decibel and joined by Inovia Capital.
– The company has created an open-source toolkit to help developers remove some of the complexity associated with creating these applications.
– The company has been remote from its early days, and had just opened an office in Quebec City when the pandemic hit, so they haven’t had much opportunity to use it.
– It will be up to employees whether they come in or not.

– Swyft, a company that has just raised $17.5m in Series A, helps retailers of any size provide affordable same-day delivery.
– The round was co-led by Inovia Capital and Forerunner Ventures, with participation from Shopify and existing investors Golden Ventures and Trucks VC.
– Swyft is a marketplace, connecting a network of shipping carriers with vendors.
– The company provides software to those carriers to make them more efficient, and turns them into a vast network that allows them to pick up more inventory without adding to their infrastructure.
– To date, major players in both shipping and retail have dominated this space, thanks in large part to their ability to deliver quickly.

– Disco, a Toronto, Canada-based live learning platform for creators, closed a $4.75m funding round.
– The round was led by Quiet Capital, Golden Ventures, inovia, and GSV (investors in Masterclass, Coursera).
– Influencers from the learning space, creator economy and community platforms are also investing.
– The company intends to use the funds to expand operations and development efforts to bring the product to market.

– Neeva, an ad-free, private search Engine founded by a former Google VP, has raised a new $40 million funding round.
– The round was led by its original investors, Sequoia Capital and Greylock; with Inovia Capital participating.

– Snapcommerce announced an $85M USD growth round to bring total capital raised to over $100M USD.
– The round was co-led by Inovia Capital and Lion Capital with participation from Acrew DCF, Thayer Ventures and Full In Partners, and included existing investors Telstra Ventures and Bee Partners.
– Snapcommerce will use the investment to expand into new consumer verticals executing its broader vision of improving the way people shop on their phones.
– Snapcommerce is a flexible, AI-driven platform that is vertical-agnostic and uses messaging to personalize the mobile shopping experience and deliver the best promotional prices.
– Snapcommerce is projected to cross over $1B USD in total mobile sales in 2021.
– Over 100 Million messages have been exchanged with over 10 Million customers through the Snapcommerce platform to-date.

– Symend is a digital engagement platform.
– The company raised $43m in Series B+ funding.
– The round was led by Inovia Capital with participation from a consortium of investors, bringing Symend’s total funding to date to over $100m.
– Symend has rapidly accelerated recruitment, growing from 50 people to over 225 in 2020 and expects to double in size in 2021.